The overall goal of the research in this proposal is to identify the affective and cognitive processes by which minority and majority sources exert influence. The proposed research is designed to provide an integrative and unifying framework for understanding the effects of minority sources as well as to study systematically the impact of minority appeals on the processes known to underlie influence. These goals will be accomplished through meta-analytic testing and integration of existing research findings as well as through experimental investigation. The proposed research will examine the impact of appeals from minority and majority sources on source perceptions, message processing, and affective responses and will assess the role of these factors as mediators of source effects on influence. Because the behavioral style accompanying minority appeals is believed intrinsic to the unique effects of these sources, the proposed process framework will be used to explicate the effects of various influence styles.